APGA Tour: Ryan Alford takes first-round lead in Scottsdale

Chez Reavie ... He's like a long reliever who's just as comfortable taking the mound in a spot start on zero notice. With pitchers and catchers reporting across Major League Baseball this week, that analogy is an easy pull given that the logo of the Arizona Diamondbacks is visible on the side of his cap. His flexibility between occasional appearances in the Power Rankings and a default position as a Sleeper hinges on his recent play. Well, the pendulum is swinging back into the preferred direction after a T16 at Pebble Beach, his first top 25 in five months. You'd expect his skill set to fit Riviera as well, and it has at times. Although six of his 10 appearances resulted in a missed cut, and he placed outside the top 70 in two others, he's also finished seventh (2016) and T10 (2020). K.H. Lee ... This is the first time that he's centered among converging trends. Of course, there was the close call at TPC Scottsdale two weeks ago where he settled as a co-runner-up to Brooks Koepka's heroics on the penultimate hole, but Lee also is 2-for-2 at Riviera with a T25 in 2019 and a T13 last year with a scoring average of 69.63 in those eight rounds. He's not as much of an unknown to even core golf fans as he was, say, before the Waste Management Phoenix Open, but he's no stranger to winning abroad. The 29-year-old has a pair of victories on the Japan Golf Tour on his résumé. He also prevailed in consecutive Korea Opens before making his way to the PGA TOUR. J.T. Poston ... His career-long-tying 0-for-4 skid is a thing of the past after consecutive top 20s in recent weeks. En route to a T18 at Torrey Pines, he led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting and ranked second in par-5 scoring. Those feels carried over to TPC Scottsdale where he finished second in putting: birdies-or-better and T4 in par-5 scoring to post a T11. Perfect in three tries at Riviera with a personal-best T17 as a rookie in his debut in 2017. Brian Stuard ... His success so often has been reliant on his ability to split fairways, it explains why he's had success on multiple occasions on tracks like Sea Island, Waialae, Harbour Town and Mayakoba. Those backdrops share two critical variables in common. Each is exposed to wind and none is of a length that he can't handle. As one of the shortest knockers on the PGA TOUR, the 38-year-old plays to his strengths out of necessity. Currently eighth in fairways hit and T18 in proximity to the hole on approach. He's fresh off a T16 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am where he ranked inside the top 15 in both driving accuracy and greens in regulation. He also led the field in par-3 scoring. He's 4-for-6 at Riviera with a personal-best T23 a year ago. Sung Kang ... There's only one data point that suggests that he's going to be a threat at Riviera. Given he's been mired in a drought without a top-25 finish (and only one top 35) since play resumed last summer, that there's at least one data point is a big deal, and it's a big one at that - his track record. In six appearances since 2012, he's survived every cut and has posted four top 25s, including a share of runner-up honors last year. His scoring average in his last 20 rounds on the course is a sporty 69.80. NOTE: Sleeper is a relative term, so Rob uses unofficial criteria to determine who qualifies. Each of the following usually is determined to be ineligible for this weekly staple: Winners of the tournament on the current host course; winners in the same season; recent major champions; top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking; recent participants of team competitions.

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The Club at Nine Bridges, site of this week’s THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, was the fourth-toughest venue on TOUR last season. High winds played a large part in the course’s difficulty, but so did its large, sloping greens and deep bunkers. According to several metrics, this week’s venue was the TOUR’s toughest on and around the greens. Players got up-and-down less than half the time at last year’s CJ CUP. The scrambling percentage at Nine Bridges (48.2 percent) was the lowest on TOUR last season. Nine Bridges also had the TOUR’s third-lowest sand-save percentage (39.3). “The ball, it has a tendency to not sit in great spots around the greens. You know, it always seems to kind of fall away or seems to go down into a bunker,â€� said last year’s champion, Justin Thomas. Nine Bridges also had last season’s highest average putts per round (31.3) – that’s almost 0.5 putts more than second-place Monterey Peninsula Country Club — as well as the lowest one-putt percentage (31 percent) and highest three-putt percentage (6.9 percent). The locals speak of the “Halla Mountain break,â€� a reference to the large mountain at the center of Jeju Island that influences the flow of the greens. “The whole golf course is on this side of the big mountain. Sometimes it can look flat but really everything is still going down the mountain,â€� said Adam Scott. Nine Bridges’ 73.2 scoring average was the second-toughest at a non-major last season (only PGA National, the site of The Honda Classic, was harder). Thomas also won The Honda, giving him victories at last season’s two toughest non-major venues. He opened last year’s CJ CUP with a 9-under 63. Then the winds, and harder hole locations, came and Thomas won by shooting even par over the final 54 holes (74-70-72). “Putting is so hard in this wind. You can have a 2- or 3-footer and if the wind picks up, you’re not going to make it and that’s just the fact of the matter,â€� Thomas said. “So that also goes into the statistics because you’re not making as many putts, percentages aren’t going to be as high. A lot goes into it, but the wind is definitely a huge factor, but the design of the golf course and the greens are also very influential.â€� Nine Bridges gets harder the closer a player gets to the hole. Many South Korean courses are claustrophobic, but Nine Bridges’ wide fairways were the third-easiest to hit last season (72.4 percent). Players hit nearly 70 percent of the greens last year, as well. Only 12 courses had a higher greens-in-regulation-percentage. The high winds and large greens impact the putting statistics because players who don’t hit it close are left with long, difficult birdie putts instead of chips and pitches from off the green. The rough is lower this year but the greens are firmer. And it’s going to be cool and windy once again. The temperature isn’t expected to exceed 62, and the winds could blow over 20 mph in the first two rounds. “It’s always windy here. It’s just a matter of how windy,â€� Thomas said. That means players will need to be precise with their ball-striking if they want to win this week. Saving par is no easy task at Nine Bridges.

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